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About Máirín Duffy

Máirín is a principal interaction designer at Red Hat. She is passionate about software freedom and free & open source tools, particularly in the creative domain: her favorite application is Inkscape. You can read more from Máirín on her blog at blog.linuxgrrl.com.

83 thoughts on “How Do You Get Fedora?”

A. It is usually 1 or 5. The 6 is that I used Fedora to preview what RHEL-(n+1) would be like.

B. 17. I normally just go directly to mirrors.kernel.org and download the DVD there. Trying to go through the webpages is a pain and I usually find it easier to drill down on mirrors than figure out where the page has gone to this time :/

C. 1. I rarely get the Spins as what I want is on the DVD and then net access. If I am using a spin.. its one I am building myself for a project that has no net access.

A : 1- but generally I switch to rawhide ~ 3 months before the release is out. 3- for new users, two or three times a year
B : 5 for new users, but I generally have a iso on my hard disk, ready to burn. 13 : yum upgrade for myself
C : 2- for new users

A: New release. Though I only upgrade my desktop (primary desktop systems) after a few months. I may also download copies for various reasons related proof of concepts or other uses almost entirely in guests that are only up temporarily. For work related installs I do it on demand when the need comes up.

B: Normal use case is via netinst.iso though I have started pre-upgrades. (that’s for personal use). For work it’s almost entirely pxeboot or virt-install

C: Pretty much only net-install.iso or vmlinuz+initrd.img except for one-offs or when the need isn’t one I choose.

I completely didn’t follow the rules, correcting now. Talking specifically from a work role (not personal)

A: 6 – Usually a new business need comes up and we need a new Fedora install.
B: 7 – (I do this even though I have access to the master mirror… go figure :)
C: 3(ish) I download the vmlinuz + initrd and do network installs or virt-installs

A1 – I download latest dvd iso and keep the image on hard disk for future use
B14 – get it from the university mirrors
C1+2 – the dvd gets all the packages and is for the installation. I also get the live iso to put it on usb and fix friends’ computers, or maybe use it to install fedora in case the dvd fails as happened in F11

A 1 – for the last release cycles I did this around Beta for my desktop and laptop and then tracked Rawhide until the release. Sometimes also download the final release only to seed the torrent, give away a burned disk, play with LiveUSB
B 2/17 – when using torrents (i prefer to download using BT not because of speed, is the same as using a nearby mirror, but for bandwidth control and easy pause/resume) I honestly don’t remember: the fp.o/get-prerelease link is posted in many places (including announcements I wite), so just click one of those. when downloading from a mirror, I usually go directly to one of the two local (.ro) mirrors
C 1/2 – for my own use, always the install DVD. also a Live image for sharing/playing with

A: 1 and 6 (or 3?): to get it into Spacewalk to allow Sysadmins of the departments of our university install it everywhere
B: 8 and 9, sometimes 6 and 12 (preupgrade mostly fails for me and I often prefer fresh installations)
C: 2, sometimes 1 or 4

A:1
B:4,5
C:2,3
I would like to add a thought: This last release was the first one I used liveCD to disk install and it is amazingly fast, unfortunately it didn’t play well on keeping other OSes on the hard drive (I was too exhausted to even report this one I just live with it) and I ended up with only f11 after the install, but still I think I will be using this from now on, otherwise I use network install directly from fedora mirrors, but it takes about an hour, with liveCD – 10 minutes or less.

A: 2 – Hardware trigger.
B: 5 – Goto fedoraproject.org
C: 3 – Net install (but sometimes I seem to not be able to find that and go for 2 – live media).

And from time to time I want to help out, check, build on, rawhide to see whether my projects work, can be adapted, trigger bugs, etc. on new kernels, gcc, other toolchains changes. This is often a bit of a pain (maybe I am just really unlucky though) . Because none of the above paths give you a really nice “this is how you get current rawhide” option. Either there is no rawhide install media yet, or there is but it will not install because it is so fragile. And preupgrade or yum upgrade will not work because of dependency or other package problems. It would be really nice if there was a simpler, more robust, way to satisfy the “want to help out with rawhide/new stuff” trigger. (If you are already running Fedora on modern kvm enabled hardware, then it would be really nice if virt-manager came with a “install current (or last know working) rawhide in a virtual box” option.)

A: 1
B:
8: because delicious makes it breezy to keep track of URLs
12: done preupgrade before
17: … or even upgrading via yum. especially if upgrading from stable to anything before beta. why risk getting bitten by an Anaconda bug?
C: mostly 2. 1 if I plan to lend the DVD to someone, but otherwise, nowadays I have more thumbdrives lying around than blank DVDs.

A: 1 – also software trigger when they “need” the new version of some software which is only available in a new version (e.g. today it was Python 2.6). Also routine upgrades of any machines which slip behind (about 50 machines so only once every 2 years or so).
B: 8
C: 1 and 2 for netbook usb installs

A1, occasionally 5 (although usually it’s a diagnostic tool rather than a replacement OS in this case)
B17: I’ll usually start at fp.org to find torrent.fp.org or mirrors.fp.org, then find the 64 bit version.
C2,1,3 (in order)

I would like to add a comment related to the survey, and what I’ve answered to the first question.
One of the main reason to upgrade to the next Fedora release (for me), is because I want to use new versions of some applications.
However I know several people who are reluctant to use Linux (here Fedora) as their main OS, because of the need to upgrade the whole system (and potentially break it), in order to get new versions of some applications.
I think this is here a major hurdle for a wider Linux adoption, and we really need to address it.

A-
1. releases and pre-releases as well, mostly for testing and seeing what the future will look like
2. of course :)
3. at a friend house, or at an event, release party,…
4. we (the french Fedora NPO) burned 1000 copies of Fedora 11 to distribute at events :)

B-
1. I usually distribute them, but I also take some sometimes. But shhhh, don’t tell anyone :P
6. that’s what I almost always do
7. for downloading the Rawhide boot.iso
9. when I want to try some more exotic spins

C-
1. that’s what I do most often
3. when installing Rawhide
5. I downloaded some spins from spins.fp.o, and tested the KDE spin I took at FUDCon. those were only one shot tests, they never got installed

A: 1 & 5 (Usually I get the net install image for new releases and then later get a Live image for the current release if I need to perform any disaster recovery actions.)
B: 7 (Go straight to the mirrors, because I don’t know where else there is a link to the net install image.)
C: 3 & 4 (The net install image or preupgrade.)

B: 6 – 9. Not sure which I hit first. For the live CD for creating a bootable USB is preferable. On personal netbook this is quickly followed by a foray into rawhide to get niggles worked out.

C: 2. I have used netbooks recently and so getting a live spin to USB gives me the install I need plus the added benefits of an ISO to use on my work machine or as a recovery CD. I have downloaded the DVD a couple of times for server installs but probably never used them to a full extent (i.e. used only packages that would have fitted on a spin CD).

I guess I am used to small disk/old machines/limited use server installations so I am quite content with a small install followed by pulling in everything needed with yum. This also makes rawhide updating on a personal machine less intensive – particularly when I had an SSD. Now I have a 1008HA moving to rawhide/12 was needed to fix suspend/ath9k issues etc. So for me: small install is ideal and if I want something else then yum is there and has the benefit of getting the latest package – I don’t see the fun in installing and then updating lots of things I may not even use for months after :)